More teeth coming soon

For those of you, including us, who thought that Rachel would only have two teeth for the rest of her life, rest assured. She's now getting her top middle four teeth in all at once. I tried to take a picture of them, sitting just below her gums, but that proved impossible since she is always chewing on something.

She's been remarkably stoic about the whole situation, still sleeping through the night (for the most part) and hasn't been too whiny. At least, not anything compared to when she got her first two teeth in...three months ago. I think part of the reason she's coping better this time around is because she's a lot more self sufficient. She doesn't have to wait for us to hand her things to chew on. She's perfectly capable of getting things herself.

This morning she was sitting on the floor chewing on a toy. I said something and she turned her head to look at me, moving her other hand as she did so to put her brush in her mouth. She only took it out of her mouth to follow Andrew into the kitchen to watch him get breakfast.

He came out of the kitchen but she didn't and I could hear some suspicious noises so I went to go check on her and she was chewing on a spatula.

"Did daddy give you that?" I cooed, "What a lucky girl!"

"Did daddy give her what?" Andrew asked.

"The spatula she's chewing on," I reminded him, thinking that he had just given it to her.

"I didn't give her anything," he said.

That means she must have opened the drawer, picked out a utensil, and then closed the drawer again. None of the drawers were open and we haven't used that particular spatula in quite some time so unless Andrew gave it to her, which he didn't, she must have gone searching for something to chew on.

Not that finding something to chew on is particularly difficult for her. I'm pretty picky about what I'll chew on: gum, food, fingernails, pen lids, etc. Rachel, on the other hand, is perfectly comfortable putting nearly anything in her mouth. She chews on tables, paper, clothes, toys, flip flops, other babies, books, chairs, sticks, leaves...anything that she can possibly get her mouth on becomes a teether.

When she stands up in her crib she can chew on her crib bars if she stands on her tip toes, which she does frequently. She hasn't been wanting to go to bed lately and will cry for me to come and give her one last snuggle before bed. When I walk into her room she'll be standing up, holding her favorite blankey, and gumming her crib bars while crying.

The other night she was screaming, as per her usual, and I walked in her room expecting her to be standing on her tip toes with her chin shoved in between the bars so that she could chew on the underside of the top bar. Instead she was reposefully gnawing on the top of the crib bar; she was a whole lot taller than I expected her to be, having to hunch over slightly to put her mouth on her crib.

I was a little confused until I picked her up and found that she had pulled the box of wipes off of her changing table and was standing on it!

In a way, I suppose it is a good thing she's waited this long to get her next few teeth. That was she can worry about how and what she chews on things and I don't have to be her only source of comfort.